Black Man Walking:
A Guide For The African American Male A Moment of Colored, Negro, Black,
African American reflection, by The Big La

You know what's funny?

An individual's perception of reality.

Wait... not reality. A person's perception of the world they live in.

Where, when and how you grew up is very important to your view of the world. Sure, we have CNN and the Internet. They give us access to virtually everything around the globe. But we don't live in most of these places. We live in the ten feet of space that surrounds us. This is where we exist.

The rules and regulations of your world are unique. We all have them inside us. We don't think about them. There really isn't much to think about. It's our short list of how to survive in our environment.

Now, I'm trying not to sound like 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf'. Lord knows when I hear the big 'White Man Is Holding Me Down' speech, I want to cringe. Do I think that because of my race, I'm at a disadvantage in this society?

Yeah. Sure.

But I can't use that as an excuse. If I have it harder than most people, then that makes me stronger than most people. I revel in my disadvantages. I think they build character. We're all heading for the same place. We just take different routes.

So what the hell am I talking about? Let me set the scene, and remember, like always, the names have been changed to protect the stupid.

I'm visiting a friend Geoff, his wife Beth and sister Helena. I worked with both Geoff and his wife at Cisco Systems for a short while. I'd classify them as the average Bay Area couple. Nice house in an upscale"gated" community.

Really good people (and I'm not being sarcastic, so shut %%^#).

So, we're sitting around watching a special on social interaction on some cable channel. Suddenly the vivid pictures of the 1992 LA riots pop up on the screen. The narrator makes a lot of comparisons to the Watts riot in '65. It finally leads to the topic of The Police's abuse of power against inner city youths, with examples of authority abuse.

Now, keep in mind, I'm watching but not really paying attention because I pretty much lived it, growing up in South Central Los Angeles in the 80's (i.e. the peak of the LA Gang Wars). I watched my neighborhood burn on television, while I was attending San Jose State University. It sucked...

Anyway, Beth and Helena are staring at this in utter contempt. They start this intense conversation of how this is wrong, and shocking, and (my favorite word) atrocious.

So, being the only Black man in the room, it was time to turn to me and get my opinion.

Now, keep in mind Beth is a sweet woman. She's done nothing but treat me like a good friend since day one. But sometimes the racial gap is so vast, that you have to laugh.

She turns to me and says. "This is atrocious." ( Ha ha ha...)

The only thing I could do was shrug and say. "Yeah, but what are you gonna do, huh?"

And around that time it hit me. I wasn't upset with Beth's naivety, but at my acceptance of the situation. For me, it wasn't an atrocity. It was the way things were. It was something that I had to live with for my first 18 years. If you were Black or Latino in LA, you could expect to get stopped, pulled-over, or attacked by a Police Officer at least once a week. Quite literally, it was just a part of the small space I lived in...

Okay, I can see you saying: "What the hell is the Big La talking about?! He's babbling!!"

Well, let me take you little trip down memory lane...

I remember this day very well. I believe I was 15. It was a Friday, and I was heading home from school. I just got off the bus and I'm walking along my street. My headphones were blaring a new hip hop tape I just bough, so I'm not paying attentions to world around me.

I'm about four houses away from my home, right? Unbeknownst to me, a Police car is racing toward me from a distance. It sees me and decides to make a dramatic entrance. The car races past me and then fish-tails around in the middle of the street (a' la TJ Hooker) and comes to a screeching halt. I turn around just in time to see both TJ's flinging their doors open and drawing weapons on me. The driver had a little snub-nose gun, while his partner had a shotgun.

Startled. I reach to take my headphones off. Apparently, this was an act of aggression on my part, so the officers maneuvered from behind their doors and take positions behind parked cars, shouting commands to me. Unfortunately, I have an earful of music, so I couldn't understand them.

By this time, the whole neighborhood was out watching me getting 'the business'.

I took my headphones off in time to hear one of the cops screaming hysterically. "Put your hands on top of your head!"

I complied. (as any semi-law abiding citizen would do).

"Now, interlock your fingers!!!"

????

"I said INTERLOCK YOUR F***ING FINGERS, NOW!!!

What the...

YOU KNOW WHAT THE F*** I MEAN!!!"

I took a good guess and just put one hand on top of the other.

So, while the driver was checking me for weapons, the other read me my rights, with a shotgun about a yard away from my left eyeball.

Now, let me tell you: For those who've never experienced it, looking down the nose of a shotgun is not a very pleasant thing.

Next, comes the car ride.

I'm shoved in the backseat of the patrol car. They informed me that I had just robbed an elderly woman at gunpoint and took her bill money. They were taking me to a perimeter check point where they would put me in a lineup. All this time, they're talking to me like I just slapped their mothers or something.

We pull up to the check point. I look outside the window and see six other kids my age sitting on the curb, handcuffed and frightened (just like me).

On the other side of the car, another officer is leading the elderly woman to the car to take a look at me. She looks into the window and stares at me for a good ten seconds.

"That's not him." She tells the officer. "That's not any of them."

At this time, the patrol car takes off from the scene, the officers in the front seat, sighing in frustration. That's when the one riding 'shotgun' (pun intended) turns around and says with a nice grin. "Sorry about that, little fella. You fit the description of the guy we're looking for."

I sat there and said nothing. I was remembering the other six guys on the curb, back at the checkpoint. The only thing any of them had in common with me were their brand new pairs of 501 Levi's jeans.

That incident wasn't the first time, or last time it happened. Thinking back, it was a terrible fact of life.

A couple years ago, a Black man named Bryonn Bain wrote an incredible article for the Village Voice called "Walking While Black: The Bill of Rights for Black Men". An encounter with the NYPD inspired him to write the 'The Bill Of Rights For Black Men'.

It's scary to think that you can be conditioned to not only 'tolerate' abuse, but to actually except it on some level. I can't remember all the times I got harassed by the PO-LEESE back then. Hell, I got picked up in 1995 for 'fitting the description'. The cops actually came into my workplace and pulled me out, because my 'blue jacket matched the one some guy was wearing when he robbed a grocery store'.

The REAL crappy part of it, is that I didn't even get an apology.

But, I didn't expect to get one. That's what happens in the ten feet of space where I live.